Punk Hardcore Oi! New Wave Post-Punk

Formed: Los Angeles, California, USA

Like Circle One, Shattered Faith tried to prove two things: that punks could be religious, and that Catholics could rock.

They followed their fairly decent debut single with Live, one half of which was indeed recorded live. While Spencer Alston’s vocals fit neatly in with the Californian punk thang, his band’s sprightly, occasionally catchy, often jerky hardcore rhythms fail to offer anything original, and abysmal po-faced lyrics like “Born of jackal, number of tricks/Month, day and hour of six” certainly do not help. Though tighter, the studio material is boring and lifeless, and full of rockisms.

1982 is a compilation, ostensibly matching their half-studio/half-live debut album with an equal amount of studio cuts. I say ostensibly, because the live songs are in a completely different running order to the original, there’s more of ‘em, and the liner notes only list half of the 27 songs on the whole CD. Their one single is not included. Strange to see this lot sharing bills with Bad Religion and Suicidal Tendencies.